Officers' radio problems traced to faulty AC

A computer equipment room in the Bexar County dispatch center became too hot overnight Tuesday, causing a server to shut down resulting in radio problems for the San Antonio Fire Department, Bexar County Sheriff's Office and some airport and park police, officials said.

The room houses a server that is one of two primary control points for the radio systems used by the affected agencies, said Robert Adelman, the county's public safety communications manager.

By about 9 p.m. Tuesday, Adelman said problems with radio communications were traced back to the server in that room. He said it turned out four of the five air conditioners that cool the room had stopped working; the room temperature had reached around 100 degrees, about 30 higher than normal, and this caused the server to shut down.

Salazar said multiple officers were dispatched to every call and that supervisors conducted test calls throughout the night.

Firefighters' union president Chris Steele called a press conference Wednesday afternoon to demand an investigation into the cause of the problems, though he said he hadn't asked for an official response from the county or the Fire Department.

He said he was concerned that additional failures could affect response times.

Adelman said the likelihood of another failure like the one experienced overnight Tuesday is unlikely.

Why the AC units failed wasn't immediately clear, he said.

The room is checked intermittently, but now Adelman is requesting that a supervisor inspect the room every eight hours — essentially at the beginning of each shift.

He said they have also ordered sensors to show temperature fluctuations and provide some sort of external alert for those outside the room.

While Adelman has dealt with one AC unit failing, he called the failure of four units “a fluke.”

“They're never off,” he said. “They've been in a 24-hour mode of operation for eight to nine years without anything like this, so it sucks that the radio-related problems were in fact a Bexar County problem.”